Sharon Fiffer

Sharon Fiffer did not begin her writing career as a mystery author. After co-editing (with her husband, writer Steve Fiffer) three acclaimed collections of literary memoirs, Home: American Writers Remember Rooms of Their Own and Family: American Writers Remember Their Own, both published by Pantheon; and Body, published by Bard, Sharon found her inner Nancy Drew. “I was spending two weeks at Ragdale, an artist’s colony in Lake Forest, Illinois, beginning work on my own collection of stories based on growing up in and around my parents tavern, The E Z Way Inn. Looking around my quiet room in this beautiful Arts and Crafts house on the prairie, I started playing around with a “what-if” scenario, and, by the end of the day, I had written the first twenty pages of… something… which I was calling Stuff and which later, almost entirely unchanged, became the first chapter of Killer Stuff. I spent the rest of my Ragdale stay, alternately writing more of KS and telling myself and anyone else who would listen that I wasn’t a mystery writer. Imagine my surprise and delight when I found out that I was!” Click here to follow Sharon on Twitter Sharon’s other books include the non-fiction titles, Imagining America: Paul Thai’s Journey From The Killing Fields to Freedom and Fifty Ways To Help Your Community: A Handbook for Change which she co-wrote with Steve Fiffer. Her short stories have been published in several literary magazines and she has been recognized by the Illinois Arts Council with a Literary Award for the short story, The Power of Speech, and with an Artist’s Fellowship in Fiction. She has taught in the Writing Programs/English Departments of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Barat College and Northwestern University. Sharon lives in the Chicago area with her husband Steve and, depending on the time of year, one, two or three of her children. She admits to being a collector and scrounger, but is desperately, after masquerading as Belinda St. Germaine, the decluttering guru in The Wrong Stuff, trying to reform. In all probability, she will not succeed.